Pauline Frank was born August 17, 1859, in Bamberg. Her parents were Lazarus Silbermann, a merchant in Bamberg, and Luise Silbermann, née Zenner. Luise was born in Lichtenfels in 1814 and died January 30, 1888.Lazarus was born in 1816 and died in October 1891. Pauline had eight siblings, who were born between 1843 and 1857.
Her husband Maier N. Frank was born January 30, 1850 in Estenfeld, Lower Franconia. They married around 1880. Maier, together with his brother Isaak, had the textile goods Frank brothers wholesale company in Würzburg. Maier N. Frank died on February 10, 1917, in Würzburg.
Pauline and Maier had three children.
Their daughter Sophie Sara, born November 4,1882 in Würzburg, was married to the businessman Lothar Midas in Fürth. She emigrated with her husband, their daughter Hildegard and their son-in-law from Lisbon to New York August 9, 1941. Lothar and Sophie lived in Queens, New York, where Lothar died October 10, 1964, and Sophie in July 1979.
Pauline’s daughter Anna, born May 23,1884 in Würzburg, lived in Fürth with her husband, the businessman Richard Weiß, born March 30, 1878. They also emigrated to New York, together with their three children, who were born between 1911 and 1917. Anna and Richard lived in New York, where Richard died March 12, 1944. Anna died in Queens in 1971.
Pauline’s son Dr. Julius Jakob was born on April 10, 1886. He was a lawyer and a judge, during the 1930s a higher regional court councellor in Schweinfurt. After his forced retirement, he was chairman of the IKG Schweinfurt. At the beginning of 1939, he took over the welfare office at the Bavarian Association of the Isrealite communities, as well as the chairmanship of the student association „Salia“, which he continued to do even when in exile. April 30, 1918, Julius married Rosa Rachel (Rosel) Schwarzhaupt, born November 2, 1894, who came from a respected Regensburg merchant family (see article Schwarzhaupt). Rosa and Julius had two children. Michael Martin Salomon Meir Frank was born March 3, 1919 in Würzburg. Their son Stefan Sebastian Lazarus Frank was born March 31, 1922 in Regensburg.
Rosel’s brother, Heiner Schwarzhaupt, emigrated to Argentina in July 1938 with his wife Lorle and their eldest daughter Eva. Rosa brought the two smaller children, Irma and Ruth to their parents, in Argentina, in February 1939. She then returned to Germany to her husband.
From June 19, 1939 to March 21, 1940, Rosel lived with her husband and his mother Pauline in the former apartment of the Haimann family at Martiusstrasse 8 in Munich, which had been assigned to them by the Nazi authorities. They were visited there twice by Betty Schwarzhaupt, Rosel’s mother (October 9 to October 13, 1939, and February 17 to March 18, 1940), presumably in preparation for the emigration of Betty, Rosel and Julius and their two children. Rosel and Julius, like their two sons, managed to emigrate. On March 23, 1940, they boarded the SS Washington in Genova and arrived in New York. Until Julius‘ death on February 27, 1968, they lived in Kew Gardens, New York. Rosel died May 5, 1985 in New Jersey. Her son Stefan, a grandson of Pauline´s, lived in Philadelphia and worked there as a food chemist. He died July 17, 2018, in Burlington, New York. Her son Michael, also a grandson of Pauline, emigrated to Palestine. He worked there as a general at the Zahal. He died in Holon near Tel Aviv December 25, 1999.
Pauline Frank arrived at the Theresienstadt concentration camp June 11, 1942 on the transport II/4. There are no survivors of this 50-person transport. Pauline Frank was accommodated in room 32 of the Kavalier Barracks, a dilapidated and uninhabitable building (according to the Theresienstadt Lexicon) with casemates, in which old and sometimes mentally ill prisoners were housed under terrible conditions. According to the death certificate of the Theresienstadt ghetto, she died there of pneumonia July 11, 1942 at 8:30 p.m. Her attending physician was Dr. Julius Spanier from Munich. Two days later, she was buried in the Theresienstadt cemetery, row XXIV, grave 4.
Gedenkbuch Münchner Juden, IHK Regensburg, WikiTree